Q&A’s for the Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) agreement with Elsevier

"[Dutch] universities view this agreement with Elsevier as a major step in the right direction. Both parties have endorsed the principle of open access and have reached an agreement on that ground.... The Dutch universities aim to make 30% of their researchers’ publications Open Access by 2018. The coming three years will see substantial progress made towards Open Access. This is a transition to Open Access in a sustainable way. The agreement continues to provide academics at Dutch universities access to all Elsevier journals and allows them to publish through Gold Open Access in a selection of Elsevier journals at no additional cost to the individual researcher....[W]e do not comment specifically on the financial agreements that are involved in this agreement because it is, of course, sensitive competitive information....The costs for the APCs (a sum that an academic pays for the open access publication of his/her article) for authors with a Dutch affiliation have been bought off in this agreement with Elsevier. For the next three years the costs fall under the big deal, provided that publication is in a selected journal...."